Thursday, 19 November 2015

I saw this amazing TED talks video about how exceptional leaders and brands communicate and manage to connect with their audience/customers and inspire action (See video below) and I realized we are probably making the same mistake as all those other 99.9% not-so-great leaders/brands out there.

We aren't attempting to connect emotionally with our intended audience, we're trying to round them up with logic and make them buy us. And it isn't working!

We thought people would feel strongly about what we have created, but they don't, at least not yet...not strongly enough, and the response has been tepid. I think I now understand why- it's because we have been tepid ourselves! Our messaging has been trying to appeal to the rational side of people first, which is exactly what the loser brands do...

Thank goodness we're still young and we haven't raised any external funding yet so we haven't really marketed ourselves heavily and therefore I think we have an opportunity to course correct- now.

So I got thinking- in order to communicate what really drives us or the "why we do it" of Swapzaar- in an authentic manner, we need to be very clear about it ourselves.We also need to keep reminding ourselves of the "why", every single day.

So I asked myself again- why did we start Swapzaar? What motivates us to keep at it?The answer is quite simple- we would like everyone to be able to access and enjoy the greatest fashion brands on earth From Armani to Zara, and experience their amazing products for as less money as possible and feel stylish and happy.
Not own- but access and enjoy...there's a difference( remember nownership?).

What would give us happiness? To have more and more young people enjoy the best fashion brands in the world through collaborative consumption- because we have provided them access to labels they probably couldn't have dreamt of experiencing, at least not at their age!Give them access to every big fashion brand they can imagine, and let them enjoy those- responsibly. Give them a way to fulfill their youthful style aspirations, enrich their lives- take guilt out of the equation by separating "enjoyment of style" from "ownership".

Our Vision is quite simple (below);this has our internal guiding light, and it has been put on all our company brochures- but now it's time to communicate it to our customers in an engaging yet authentic way.

We will have to spend some time and effort in distilling this vision into a message that our audience can really relate to. We hope we can do this successfully and use it in our future communication.

If you have any thoughts and ideas on how we can do so, please share them with us- we'd love to hear them.

Thursday, 5 November 2015

OUR MISSION- To be the Brand that re-defines how young Indians build their wardrobe (and therefore their personal style) by bringing the power of pre-owned fashion and rentals to them; via the web and mobile platforms.